


Not causeless is this journey to the abyss

by arienai



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Emotions, Fighting, M/M, Post-DMC5, Road Trip, gay incest just like says on the tin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-02-16 06:20:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18685849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arienai/pseuds/arienai
Summary: The twins have unfinished business in the underworld.Vergil takes his little brother on a guided tour of Hell. Spiritual enlightenment and poetry are optional. Boss fights are mandatory. There will be no refunds.





	1. The Faithless

Dante saw them a second before he smelled them: a glimpse of four bright, burning red circles in the mirror of Yamato's blade that weren't the sparks of crossed steel reflected in his brother's eyes.

"MISBEGOTTEN SPAWN OF SPARDA!"

Well here they were, having a nice brotherly tussle - you know, the kind where the loser only has to pick up a few fingers or maybe an eye off the playground - and who should interrupt but a pair of mutts with nothing better to do than bark at the mailman. These weren't the grubby little pooches Dante'd run into every time he needed to get through a doorway, seemed like, but sleek and black as the ones he and Enzo used to bet on, only juiced with demon blood, with sharp docked ears like bat wings.

The only news Dante had to deliver was that he was putting them back in the pound.

Vergil'd been the one who'd suggested they take their ball and play elsewhere after the hundred-somethingth time demons had shown up to crash the party. When they'd moved from bone white grasslands to this bone white forest of stalactites, it had been a little less like trying to play street hockey on the freeway.

"WRETCHED OFFSPRING OF THE ACCURSED TRAITOR, HEED YOUR MASTER'S WORDS."

Dante didn't have a master; last time he checked, all his bills were paid up, for once. He tossed his sword up in the air, drew his handguns, and put a bullet between every gap in the scenery before it flipped back down into his hand. They had all kinds of time until these mutts decided to make their move.

Vergil wasn't even looking. His eyes were narrowed to points, flicking through the spaces between the stones as the shapes between them stalked and circled. 

"THE EMPEROR OF THE DARK HAS RETURNED, AND YOU WILL BE BROUGHT TO HIM IN CHAINS."

Dante gave his brother a shove and stepped into his line of sight the next time they crossed blades - there were two dogs, two brothers, they would both break right and take left, a two-step tango that left their backs to one another. They'd done this so many times it didn't need saying. 

But Vergil stepped backwards. Growled under his breath and took off after one of them before Dante'd even realized it had run. His next slash had nowhere to go; the tip of his sword bit into the ground with a dejected puff of dirt. He'd lost sight of his brother's black coat in the darkness already.

Dante sighed. Gave his sword a half-hearted spin; caught it against his shoulder and turned to the ten-foot puppy that remained. "Well, I guess that leaves you and me, huh."

"YOU? I KNOW YOU NOT." It paced forward through the stone forest, and sniffed the air. "BUT YOU HAVE THE SAME HALF-BLOOD STENCH."

"ME?" Dante cocked his head in the same direction, sniffing right back at him. " _You_ stink like you threw up in your doggie dish, then ate it."

That got it to take a leap out of the woods and into the collateral clearing he and Vergil'd managed to make after a couple of hours of fun. Jaws open, roaring garbage breath, swiping the air where Dante'd been a couple of centuries ago before he'd backflipped over the ugly thing's head. "SILENCE, MONGREL!" 

"You know all that inbreeding's not good for you, right?" It did that awkward little dog-hop dogs do when they need to turn around quickly on four legs; reared up and charged again, teeth snapping. Dante gave it a generous shower of bullets on the next pass. "What you need is a little hybrid vigor to be best in show."

It howled and shuddered like that could shake off all the lead. "YOU ARE THE FOE OF THE TRAITOR'S SON, ARE YOU NOT? WHAT HAVE I DONE TO EARN YOUR IRE?"

"Read the room, pal." Dante spread his hands. "You're killing the mood."

"MOOD?" It started circling him, paw over paw. "I KNOW NOTHING OF THIS 'MOOD'."

"No? Your parents never told you what happens when two grown-ups who _really_ like each other get together, eh puppy?" Dante set his sword on his back. "Well, let me enlighten you."

"First: they find somewhere they can be alone." He gestured around the ring; it fell for the opening and lunged. Got a mouthful of rubble and some blunt teeth for its trouble.

"They start out shy, hesitating: they lean in, lean out--" Dante danced out of the way of the flurry of cracked yellow paw-nails that followed. Ducked between bites with bobs of his head. "--move forwards and backwards. Getting closer, until..."

Dante spun, switched weapons, and swept the forelegs out from under it with Cerberus's chain in one smooth motion. "One of them makes a move."

He twisted with its momentum and kipped up the side of a stalactite over the mutt's back, landing on top of it. "The lights go out!" 

"WHERE--?!" It strained its neck to try to bite him, all wound up and contorted in a way that'd make the three-headed kind headbutt its brothers. Dante jumped off just before it figured out it could roll him off, but not before he flicked open Cerberus's segments and wrapped the links around the demon's neck.

It flailed its paws, all turtled up, and thrashed to slip its makeshift collar. "Pressed up tight together," Dante leaned in close and whispered into one floppy ear. 

He ground his hips against the side of its head while it howled in indignation. "Their bodies fall into a rhyth-- oh, hey Vergil, how long you been there?"

On the opposite side of the clearing, Yamato held sheathed in one hand, Vergil didn't dignify that with an answer. "Are you finished?"

"We were just getting to the good part, weren't we?" Dante yanked Cerberus even tighter and held the demon's gasping, spitting head aloft with the other hand. "Alas, poor Doggie! I knew him, Vergil. A good dog, an excellent dog. He has borne me on his back... at least once. And, uh... now he is... uh..."

One gloved hand was already pressed to Vergil's face.

"So sue me. You were always the nerd, big brother. I was the jock." Dante kicked off the nearest stalactite and let his weight carry him in the opposite direction of the demon who, seeing its chance to rise and break free, rolled to its feet. It never saw what was coming until its head snapped free of its spinal column with a wet crunch. "Batter up!" 

The click of Yamato's sword catch closing - the stunned maw sailed in Vergil's direction - an arc of light as the hurled head flew past him.

"He has a point, you know."

"Who does?"

"The hell hound. Those are Mundus's own personal trackers. They hunt those who have crossed him." The head split in two. Droplets of blood landed on his brother's cheek. "If Mundus truly has revived, we will not know peace if we stay here."

Dante dropped the headless corpse he was holding at the same time its missing pieces hit the ground. "Well, what are we gonna do about it?"

"There are safe havens, closer to the vestibule of the underworld." Vergil tilted his head back to scan the slate grey sky above them. "Such as where you and I fought. The river."

"Always wondered about that - what's hell need with water, anyway?" His brother didn't seem to be back in the mood yet - might as well ask. 

"It isn't water." A soft snort of amusement. "If demons feed on the blood of live humans on the surface, would they not starve without them here? Just as devils can reach beyond thinnings in the veil between our worlds to possess human minds, so too can the essence of mankind flow through the gaps. It is their--"

"Thoughts and feelings. The key ingredients in demonade. I knew that, actually."

"Oh?" Vergil's chin descended, eyebrow raised. "How did you come by this knowledge?"

It was Dante's turn to smirk. "I've been here before. And believe it or not I didn't stab _everybody_ before I talked to 'em."

"I see. And where did you go?" Something about Vergil's tone reminded Dante of the way his brother's fingertips would settle on Yamato's grip the instant before he sliced everything around him to pieces.

"I, uh, well." Dante sucked in air through his teeth. "Somewhere? Lots of vending machines, and some really avant-garde softcore teen nudity - come to think of it, I think you would've liked it."

"Where did you _go_." His intonation might've been flat, but Dante could feel hostility emanating from his brother as keenly as the heat that now flushed to the surface of his own skin. Vergil was going to draw. Any time now. He had to be ready - if he saw Yamato come out of its sheath the next thing he was going see was the sword guard sticking out of his stomach.

Dante didn't bother to hide his eager hiss of anticipation. "Honestly? No idea." His grin bared most of his teeth. He shifted his heels apart. "Kinda got lost."

The blinding torrent of slashes Dante expected never came. 

In its place he chased the afterimage of a noise that, when he caught up to it, was laughter. "You got _lost_."

The burgeoning thirst for blood dissipated with that sound and the heat that now rose between them sent Dante straight back to their father's study. His brother had shown up in the threshold after Dante'd disappeared inside it for an hour to try to find a book their mother wanted, only to discover that nothing was spelled like how it sounded. To the incredulous chuckle he heard from the doorway. That did not stop even as Dante scrubbed tears from his cheeks.

"Did you stop and ask for directions?" Yeah, he was still going. With the same expression he'd worn when, aw shucks, his kid had shown up to stop Dante from bisecting his trachea. "What _is_ the matter with you?"

Dante grunted; maybe he'd finish what he started. "Was about to ask you the same question." Vergil hadn't liked being pummelled with those books much, either. "I'm not the one running from a fight."

The mirth died so suddenly Dante might as well have dreamt the sound.

Vergil's incisors scraped his other teeth in the silence that followed; Dante had his undivided attention now, and he'd felt more brotherly affection from a face full of concrete after a night out drinking than radiated from those glass grey eyes. 

It stretched on way too long. Vergil should've drawn, should've run him through, should've punched him in the gut and spit on him and told him he was too damn slow. Should've turned him into a porcupine of summoned swords and batted him around like a pinata. 

He didn't. He stared Dante down with anger and rage and hatred without joy until Dante looked away and Vergil turned aside to wipe the blood off his cheek.

It was stupid: the leather just smeared it everywhere. Dante reached out to use his sleeve and got all the way to brushing one fingertip across the back of his brother's hand before Vergil sliced it open to the wrist.

"Verg--" Dante tried, but his brother had his back to him even before he heard Yamato snap shut. He said nothing.

Dante threw his hands up in the air and sank down to the ground. Facing the opposite direction, so he wouldn't have to see the palm pressed hard against his brother's forehead.

He waited until he could hear Vergil take a seat behind him. He ripped off a piece of his shirt and tossed it over his shoulder; long seconds passed while his brother wiped his face.

Still nothing.

"Hey, Vergil," Dante tried again, softly. "You remember that time I got lost in Red Grave, when we were kids?"

Dante didn't hear anything; he imagined Vergil shaking his head, though. "The ice cream guy that showed up every summer would never come all the way out to our house, so I went into town to get some. First time, without you or mom." 

"...I told you to wait until she returned." The creak of stretched fibres; Vergil was twining the cloth through his fingers.

"Yeah, well, she mighta said no, and you weren't interested, so." Dante dragged his bootheels in the dust. "I went by myself. Got there, got my ice cream. Easy peasy."

Vergil's snort scarcely carried. "But you forgot the way back."

"No I _didn't_. There was this huge dog. It _chased_ me. Through yard after yard until - until I had no clue where I was. And everywhere I tried to go only made it worse."

The scrape of velvet on loose rocks; Vergil'd leaned back on his elbows. "Did you ask for directions?" Maybe Dante imagined the humour in his voice, or maybe he didn't.

"It was getting dark. I didn't know where I was. There was nobody around. My ice cream was all melted. I was seven - I thought I was going to die out there."

A scoff of irritation; now that was nostalgic. "And then our mother came for you, and we all lived happily ever--"

"No, you did."

" _I_ did." Disbelief, followed by a rustle as he straightened. Of his head cocked against his collar. "I... did?" A pause, then the scrape of fingers through his brother's hair. "I _did_."

"Yeah, you did." Dante leaned backwards too, closer. Far enough that if Vergil glanced behind him he could see the upside-down smile. "Walked me all the way back home in the middle of the night. It took hours. You smacked that dog with a stick and it went running away with its tail between its legs." 

Vergil clenched his fist around the bloody cloth he held while Dante's dripped into the dirt. 

"Look, what I'm trying to say is: I'd love to see more of this place. Our old man's hometown, right? And if you're here, I'm not gonna get lost again, am I? Besides, there's somebody here we owe an ass-kicking. You and me. Once and for all."

Dante didn't imagine the slight nod.

Vergil rose and brushed off his sleeves. Smoothed his hair back. Adjusted his collar, and straightened his jacket. A moment later a blood-stained scrap of shirt landed in Dante's lap. "Then I shall be thy guide."

"Hm?" Dante rolled to his feet and stuffed that rag into his pocket.

"And lead thee hence through an eternal place, where thou shalt hear the shrieks of hopelessness of those tormented spirits." His brother's thumb stroked the silk threads that bound Yamato's hilt. "Each one of whom bewails their second death."

So they were back to the poetry. Well, there weren't any books to throw at him, this time. At least his brother was back, too. And walking away without warning, so that Dante had hop-jog the first couple of steps after him to make it look like he wasn't running. Where they were going he had no idea, but Vergil seemed to.

"Hey, Vergil, while we're bringing things up for old times' sake, you remember how mom bought _you_ ice cream for bailing me out, that night?"

That made him slow down, just a little, so that Dante could stride up to him. 

"I remember you begged me for it endlessly. I don't even like ice cream." Vergil's brow furrowed, straining to recall. At length he just waved. "You're welcome."

"You." Dante stopped him with a finger to the chest. "Ate it. Right in front of me."

"Nothing but the pitiful cries of those without dessert." Vergil stepped past him again, but not before Dante saw him quash a smile.


	2. The Virtuous

The brothers of blood stopped for the fourth time that hour, so that the younger could point to yet another statue and ask the elder in whose image it was carved.

 _Be patient with him,_ his gentler side suggested.

 _SILENCE HIM WITH YOUR BLADE_ , said the other.

And Vergil, having already tried the latter, endured. All that remained of the statue was a torso, half-submerged in the damp, rust-coloured earth on which they now trod. The figure in the image had been armoured, though whatever identifiable devices that armour might have borne had been defaced by the hole smashed through the center of the marble chest plate, as though one had tried to fell the sitter by slaying his effigy.

"Someone who found disfavour with his master," Vergil offered.

His brother attempted to pry more of the blemished stone out of the muck with his sword, as if dissatisfied with that answer. "What, you're telling me you've been down here for years and you don't know all the lore already? Yeah right."

_Be patient with him._

Vergil's grip eased around Yamato's hilt and he passed it idly between his hands instead. "The history of this place extends far beyond two thousand years."

If Dante observed the change his demeanour, he did not say, so Vergil continued, "There were kings of the underworld before Mundus. Their names are lost, because the first thing he did when he came to power was strike them from memory. Forbid them to be spoken, and any tales of their great deeds. Cast down their graven images."

"Bust up their statues." Dante nodded. He released it, heedless of the way the mud splashed over their boots as it resettled.

"That is what I just said." Vergil attempted, patiently, to unknit his brows. "Or it could have been a casualty of other bouts of conflict. Destruction. No less common here than they are above. Whoever it was is now lost to time."

"Hm." Dante scratched his stubble as if Vergil had said something very profound.

With his brother contented, Vergil continued their trek; a moment after he strode off again toward the ash black horizon he heard those familiar footfalls behind him. He knew not which to contemplate: the absurdity of the notion that his brother was here in hell of his own volition, that the two of them were going to stroll the inverse of the path he had so painstakingly struggled to carve mere months ago, or that his brother still dragged his heels when he walked, faintly, like a chi--

"You know, you're pretty good at this whole tour guide bit, Vergil. Maybe you could try it as a side gig. It's too bad you're not wearing those fancy neckties anymore, but we could get you a cute little hat."

Vergil quelled the instinct to growl and cleared his throat instead. Against laughter. "You _should_ be proud of yourself, Dante. In my absence, you've learned to dress yourself above the waist." 

"Hey, with the abs I had, you - I mean with the abs I have, you'd..."

His brother nattered on; Vergil kept watch of their surroundings. One of them had to. As difficult as it was now that his brother's words and his voice and the sound of him had conjured up the ghosts of memories, as faceless, cracked, and mired as the remnants of that statue.

Vergil had remembered the night his brother spoke of, at times, formless and without context: the road to the home of their youth after dark, his brother behind him and complaining all the while. Glances stolen at the clock while he read, the hands of it traveled far past Dante's promised return. Irritation that had faded into something else entirely, that gnawed in the pit of his stomach. 

Dante behind him, while hungry jaws bore down on them both. _"Protect them in my stead."_

Vergil turned inward to chase away the unease. Wondered, aloud to himself, why Dante talked so much. He had the last time, as well.

 _He's afraid,_ was the advice offered.

Which could not be. There were no demons in this part of the underworld that could challenge either of them, let alone together.

_Those aren't the devil he fears._

"Are we there yet?" Dante interrupted him with a prod.

"Yes," Vergil replied, and to his surprise, they were: the sodden ground was ankle-deep, and before them flowed a body of water so vast it stretched beyond sight. Only its uniformity of motion revealed it as a river; the ripples that displayed this were rimmed red where they reflected the light, and the depths were otherwise murky and ashen.

"Where is 'here', exactly?" 

"The boundary of Mundus' domain." 

"Huh. Didn't think he'd have one."

"As you seem to have discovered, little brother," Vergil added, to allay his skepticism, and to see his chagrin, "the underworld is as vast as our own. There are places over which he has little control. Where his vassals are in name only."

"So, why'd you..." Dante trailed off, inaudibly. "I mean, how do we get across? That's a long flight."

_Tell him._

"An impossible one." Vergil gestured with Yamato's hilt to hazy shapes above the river. To whorls and eddies in the flow itself that gleamed ominously from below. "Not only will our power be insufficient to carry us across, this passage is well-patrolled."

"That's a long swim, then. Been a while since we went skinny dipping together."

"I told you: this isn't water. It's--"

"Demonade. Got it. Sounds refreshing."

Vergil bent down and cupped a handful of the liquid; clearly, a demonstration was in order. He meant to splash it into his brother's face but Dante caught his wrist, pressed his lips to side of Vergil's palm, tipped it and swallowed.

And spat and heaved and coughed immediately, doubled over, while Vergil's eyes searched the heavens.

"In its pure form, drawn directly from humans, demons _can_ consume this--"

"I _know_ that--"

"Then why did you _drink it_?" Vergil wiped a mixture of Dante's spit and the vestiges of human emotions off his lapel while his brother wheezed. "When it seeps into the soil of the underworld, it becomes tainted. Moreso the further it is in contact - in the lowest levels of hell it is lethal poison, to us. The flora of this place, such as the Qliphoth, transmutes it into sustenance."

"Water, water, all around, but not a drop to drink? Wow, that would've been useful to tell me." Dante spat again and smacked his lips.

"'I've been here before, big brother, I already know everything,'" Vergil admonished, and side-stepped a rather pedestrian attempt on Dante's part to kick him into the river. 

Dante splashed it uselessly with his foot instead, marring the violet shadows left in his brother's wake. "So, no swimming. We just cut our way cross with the Yamato?"

"The fastest solution," Vergil granted, "But that measure of power will draw every demon present to us for miles."

"Okay, okay, I give up: o wise one, _how_ do we get across?"

"We pay the ferryman." 

Vergil heard Dante's instinctive inhalation when he drew his sword; saw the shift in his posture. The blow his brother was expecting never came: Vergil curled his fingers around Yamato's blade and jerked it back sharply. A spray of blood droplets hit the surface. Dante stepped forward. Vergil held his hand above the river and let the rest ooze into it until the wound healed.

"I hope that works better than the last time you tried it."

Vergil refused to be baited. There was no need: the blood spread as oil along the ripples, and with it, a branched green incandescence that traveled further and faster than the eye could see. From it arose bone-chilling wind, and mist.

Before long that mist came to shroud the silhouette of a galley with its sails struck. As it resolved into view the drumbeats ceased along with the strokes of its oars. 

A menagerie of demons of all kinds lined the deck, from the abyssal hounds and lizards of flame, to the scythe-bearing masked mannequins of the vestibule, to the lithe sirens that made this riverland their home. One-eyed and many-eyed vermin detached from the ship's lines to hover overhead.

And Charon, captain and coxswain of this vessel, came to the side at the forecastle, wrapped in thick grey robes. The arms that gripped the bulwark were skeletal, as was the face from which his deep-set green eyes blazed.

"I do not accept thy passage, thou accurs'd deserter," Charon called out to the shore, "Thy blood foments naught but discord, loyal thou ne'r were."

"This is going well," said Dante. 

"I bow to no defeated king," Vergil replied, "But you will carry my brother and I across the river. If you won't, you shall die."

There came no response save the swarming of winged demons off the sails, nor had Vergil expected any. They poured into the space between vessel and shore while their kindred on her took again to their oars. A few perished with astonishment on their insectoid faces that, before any of them had reached the brothers, Vergil had crossed that gap with a speed that found purchase on the surface of fluid as if it were stone. With one boot on the wooden hull for leverage, he leapt, Yamato drawn, and scattered more wing and leg fragments to the winds with every arc.

Vergil landed atop the gunwale, crouched. He sheathed his sword. There were two score of them, by his count, perhaps more. All with the same bright green eyes as Charon.

A handful approached him; he skewered these with blades summoned by his own power, as he paced toward their captain. "You're running out manpower for this vessel."

"Thy flesh will strengthen them."

Charon returned to his drum and beat it once: all of his assorted rowers stood as one. They advanced on Vergil, who scattered the whole first line of them with a hail of sharp blue, and the hulking, chained, and armoured beast still standing he eviscerated with one cut. Ready for the next, scowling. None of these were worthy opponents.

On the third wave one of the insects slammed into him from behind. He slashed out, annoyed, and as he sliced through it exploded. Hardly sufficient to hurt him - sufficient to knock him off his balance. 

No sooner had he hit the deck on both knees than a mannequin swept a scythe through his abdomen and dragged him into the teeming mass of them.

Vergil snarled through the pain; cut the offending limb off with the haft of the weapon; sidestepped a hell hound's charge; sliced through a siren's outstretched talons; pierced a lizard's throat before it could breathe out fire.

More talons dug into his back. A scythe nearly swept his feet out from under him and he stumbled. 

He could slay them all in the blink of eye if he could only create some distance, but there was none to be found. No gaps in this throng. The instant he created one was the instant it was filled. Frustration quickly turned to rage that roiled beneath the surface of his skin and threatened to boil over.

_YOU'VE GROWN WEAK._

_You've grown accustomed to having your brother at your back._

A triumphant shout drew Vergil's gaze skyward. To Dante. Who'd made his own bridge aloft: he leapt from one enemy to the next, using the last as an airborne stepping stone to carry him from shore. His innate power and their spilled blood, shining: a crimson star astern.

"I have my own back," Vergil informed them all. 

That anger was power, a power freed to flood every pore of weak human flesh and in an instant it was consumed by unyielding white scales. The force exuded by making himself one - with the demon inside him, with his blade - knocked back every demon around him within armslength.

With an outflung hand, he made himself two. 

His bright shadow cut them down in swathes; Vergil waited. Crouched, while the deck boards splintered beneath the power he emanated in his watch. For the perfect moment. When the chaos of limbs and claws and fangs revealed itself to him. The instant they were all aligned. 

Then he drew.

And sheathed Yamato, with human hands. Approached Charon, while the thud of severed bodies drummed against the deck like rain.

"You will carry us across _yourself_ , if needs be."

Charon said nothing. He merely hoisted his sticks, and began to play.

The beat thrummed through the deck. Through the soles of Vergil's boots and into his very bones. Slow, steady, implacable: Yamato's hilt slipped from his fingers and when he stared at them he saw them cast in the same hue as Charon's regard. 

Every reverberation brought him a step closer to the oars.

"Now boarding!" came the cry from above--

" _No_ ," Vergil hissed before his voice fled him along with his will.

"Party of one!" Dante's feet struck the deck too, and all he managed was a strange look for his brother before he swayed with the same rhythm.

"O sons of Sparda, hale and bold." In unison they each grasped an oar, Vergil port and Dante starboard. "Thy strength shall be sufficient to pay my toll."

Vergil wrenched his eyes from his task long enough to glimpse his brother's expression: consternation and astonishment at his own helplessness. Unshaken belief that if he simply struggled hard enough, he would be free, even as he began to row in time with the beat of his new master's drum, and the ship left shore.

_Give him time. He's yet to meet this longtime fellow traveler of yours._

Indeed, at least Vergil had Dante's petulance for solace: his brother yanked the oar through the water much harder than was necessary to propel them and knocked the bow off course long enough to earn their captor's reprimand. 

Folly, but - no. No. If row they must, then they must row. If row they could, then row they _shall_.

Vergil's next stroke was even harder than Dante's, pushing them a dozen degrees in the opposite direction.

Dante's glower transformed into a grin on the very next pull. Which was so hard the rowlock rattled; at this rate, they were going exactly nowhere.

They jerked the ship from side to side, tugging it as if it were a shared toy between them, and Charon's spell could only make them _obey_. Which they did, gallantly. 

It was Dante's rowlock that broke first. He simply carried the motion to fruition, unhindered: swiped his oar up across the deck to where it bashed the instruments right out of Charon's hands. Vergil's shattered a second later, and swept Yamato up off the deck.

To meet Dante's second swing, in the same movement as the first, which batted his brother's katana backhand straight into Charon's skull.

With that volition rushed back into Vergil's limbs. Charon evaporated into dust that blew out over the waves; he caught Yamato before it hit the deck.

"Well, that crosses mutiny off the old bucket list." Dante cracked his neck, and looked to the oars and to the ship's wheel as if they were pieces of a puzzle he couldn't manage to put together. "Somebody needs to steer, right? I'm no nautical expert, but I don't think rowing on one side will work. Seems to me like we're missing something - or are you gonna dopple us all the way across?"

"We'd get there faster than the two of us if I did." Vergil gestured to the shattered rowlocks and was rewarded with his brother's amused snort. "We have sails. We'll use them."

" _You_ know how to sail? Prince of Darkness got a yacht club?"

Vergil wondered, not for the first time, if Dante had learned anything their father ever taught them. "Just steer. You can do that, can't you?"

"Sure, sure. I'll drive." Vergil watched him exactly long enough to ensure he figured out that the had to turn it in the opposite direction of his intended heading, which he did on the second or third attempt, before Vergil gauged the wind from the direction of the dissolving corpses on the deck. It would work well enough.

He caught Dante stealing glances backward in equal measure while he unfurled the mainsail and hoisted it, until the burst of speed it provided caught his attention. The ship had a foremast with another square sail, but one would be sufficient if the winds held; if they didn't, what of it? He and Dante were alone on the open channel, with nothing save the waves around them. From here all harbours would lead to the same road. If all else failed he could demonstrate that one could use oars to steer too if that was their objective rather than the opposite.

Vergil wasn't entirely certain when he'd climbed the rigging to stare out over the river. He noticed when Dante did, and his brother called up to him: "I could get used to this! Captain Dante and his First Mate Vergil. Too bad Nero's not here - what do you think, cabin boy or anchor?"

" _Captain_ Dante?" Vergil chuckled under his breath. "What's our bearing to shore, my captain?"

Vergil waited, bemused, two whole heartbeats before Dante finished scouring his brain for some pithy reply. "Uh, regal? Noble? Handsome? C'mon Vergil, I've got the steering wheel. I'm the captain."

"The captain doesn't man the helm." 

"Oh?" Dante looked upward and backward. "Sounds like I've got another mutiny brewing. Where does the captain hang out, then?"

Vergil leapt lightly atop the masthead and stood, staring down at him. "Here will do."

"King of the Castle, huh." This Dante seemed to understand; he conjured his own sword and rammed it between the spokes of the wheel to maintain their course. Inelegant, but effective. 

It had been some time since his brother had resorted to his other weapons. Longer still since Vergil's own arsenal had felt empty - he banished the thought as soon as it arose. He did not collect weapons like toys. Yamato was all he needed. One blade, one cut, one kill. 

Dante charged up the ropes with all the ferocity Vergil had so eagerly anticipated, and Vergil danced over the strike he'd seen coming from the deck: Dante lashed out with Cerberus before he reached his brother's level. Tried to wrap its chains around his ankles to haul him off the mast. 

Vergil did not anticipate the weapon changing forms to a staff, and the blow to his chest nearly knocked him into the void. Would have done so, had he not grabbed the end of it with his free hand, and swung himself back around to return the favour with Yamato's sheath; his backslash accomplished precisely what Dante had tried to do with his chains. 

Dante halted his own fall mid-air with a line, which he spun around like a gymnast to build momentum and flung himself with all his weight and the two heavy halves of Cavaliere at the spot his brother stood. Vergil parried both. Too slow. Much too slow.

But the force of it was enough to push him backward once more; Vergil was ready for it this time, his back to another line. He leaned forward and dug his heels in until he ground to a stop. Motes of frayed hemp puffed up like dust around his soles. 

There was as little delay in his riposte as his brother's - Dante had hardly raised the haft of his ridiculous weapon before Vergil struck, behind him this time. 

He saw Dante whirl around, but rather than attempt to arrest his fall, this time his brother drew two of that woman's oversized firearms and fired both before he hit the deck.

Vergil redirected one with his blade, the other he had no choice but to dodge. Into a face full of bullets. He missed one step; one step was enough to lose his footing and join his brother on the wooden planks below.

Dante seemed as surprised as he was. For a moment. While the sawdust settled and they panted for breath.

Vergil won the furious scramble back to the top that followed by a full stride.

He would not be moved. Dante could not use the environment to his advantage in quarters so close, and he could not keep his footing in the center when Vergil could attack from any direction he chose. This battle was to the swift, and Vergil noted with delight Dante's growing aggravation. His brother's breath misted red; his fingertips crackled. To resort to triggering his true form would be akin to admitting defeat in this duel. Vergil would only respond in kind.

Dante's next attack began at a running charge and in the final - slow, painfully slow - instant Vergil felt a burst of heat as his brother's forearms were wreathed in Balrog's flames. An ugly attempt to grapple him off his platform, one that left Dante wide open. Vergil took the opportunity he was handed; punished his brother for rushing in by plunging Yamato straight through his chest.

Dante grunted and spat blood, but continued his momentum until his limbs were wrapped around Vergil's torso and he hurled them both off the masthead.

Vergil landed, breathless, in a bed of splintered and shattered boards, his brother atop him. 

Pain meant less to them than it did full-blooded humans. This they'd learned early in their lives, when shoving another child to the ground caused them to burst into tears and shoving each other down a flight of stairs was nothing more than a prelude to the real tussle. Their flesh would knit in an instant and their bones in seconds; Vergil had internalized this younger, he thought, for he recalled his mother's voice, softly chastizing Dante that, if he wanted to play rough, it had to be with his brother. Where it seemed to dull the senses and dim the minds of men, it heightened theirs.

Yamato, however, with its own power, was a different matter. Hot blood gushed over Vergil's hand, still firm around Yamato's hilt and flush to Dante's ribcage, and soaked it to the wrist. His brother could not heal around this insertion, mere inches from his heart.

Dante's hitched snarls, low and deep within his throat, grew less and less human. Vergil responded in kind. The need to destroy that emanated from his brother's body everywhere it was in contact with his own called forth an echo of that same urge, building until it found resonance with Dante's, amplified until it was all he could hear and feel.

"Your kid taught me that one." Dante pinned Vergil's other arm behind his head, all his teeth bared in what only another demon would recognize as a smile.

Vergil twisted Yamato viciously. Blood dripped from his brother's incisors down onto his cheek. "My son possessed the wherewithal to give it back to me. Do you?"

Dante stroked a few errant strands of hair off Vergil's forehead.

Vergil froze.

_Go on._

_RIP HIS HEART OUT._

Dante cupped the side of his face; Vergil opened his mouth to--

A bone-jarring lurch wrenched Dante off of him and flung his brother halfway across the deck. 

For a moment Vergil thought perhaps they'd run aground until, up on his elbows and still dazed, he saw the night black tentacles wrapped around the entire stern. That led to a ship-sized maw in the middle of a maelstrom.

"Just my luck," Dante grunted wetly, yanked out the bloodied blade inside him, and tossed it back to his brother. "You stay _right_ there. I'll deal with this. Won't take a second."

Dante ran to the ship's wheel and Vergil could swear he saw him limp the first few steps until he adjusted his pockets. There his brother tore his sword free and vaulted toward the enormous creature that had captured their craft, and burst winged into blinding red light as he descended. 

_He has somewhere to be, it seems._

Vergil sighed. Caught the wheel before it spun wildly out of control.

He had _just_ said the river was well-patrolled but he was himself just as much to blame for their incaution. And in his brother's defense, he did seem to have it handled. A man-sized section of appendage splashed seaward over the bowsprit, followed by flashes of fire and whooping cries. 

Much more difficult was going to be steering them free of this; as if in answer, he heard: 

"EVEN SHOULD YOU SLAY ME YOU WILL DROWN HERE."

The kraken was correct: they were close enough to shore that, if he expended all of his power, Vergil might be able to make it, but Dante, having already spent so much of his, never would. If he used Yamato to sever the space between them and solid ground they would live just long enough to see all the armies of hell descend upon them. They'd been doomed the moment its tentacles pierced the hull.

_ABANDON HIM TO HIS FATE._

_He would never abandon you._

That was, demonstrably, untrue, and so Vergil ignored both sentiments. He and his brother's strength lay not in their harmony, but in their discord. _Thy blood foments it._ In the opposing of forces.

He turned the wheel hard in the opposite direction of the whirlpool's currents. The creature reacted by dragging them toward it, which Vergil'd known it would. Together both overwhelmed what little resistance the ship could provide. Harder and harder it pulled, aiming to end the fight before Dante could detach all of its limbs from its body. Until it was pulling with all of its strength.

Vergil released the wheel.

Between the efforts of the kraken and the force of the water they whipped around and around and around and Vergil waited for the moment he needed, sword drawn against the deck.

Dante was in the midst of sawing his own free from one of its eyes, when both caught sight of what he was about to do.

"HE WOULD NOT CONDEMN HIS OWN BLOOD TO THE DEPTHS!"

Dante gave it a consoling pat. "You don't know my brother, pal."

Vergil sliced the ship in half.

Bereft of its anchor, the other half hurtled free toward the shore. Dante leapt free and dove through the air as fast as his wings could carry him toward it. He wasn't fast enough - he would never make it. Yet, he tried.

Vergil caught him mid-flight with a volley of summoned swords that pierced him and pinned him to the deck.

The remnants of the ship broke apart as they crashed across the river; Vergil was jolted off his feet and clung to the deck beside his brother. There was nothing for it but to hold on and hope his aim was true. He looked up when the waves licked at his boots to find them spitting distance from the opposite shore.

He released the red blade he'd been clutching. It vanished, and he stepped from piece to piece of wreckage until he reached dry land. Dante hopped onto a still-coasting beam and rode it onto the bank.

"Hey, Vergil, next time you've got a plan like that, could you let me in on it? They say communication is the most important part of any relationship." 

Vergil looked him over, flatly. "You seem unscathed."

"Sure, physically." His brother was soaked to the knees, and needed a new shirt, badly, but black had always been best to hide the bloodstains.

Vergil snorted, softly. "Are you telling me I hurt your feelings?" 

"Would you feel bad if I did?"

"I'm not going to carry you around my neck, if that's what you mean." His brother fell silent as he puzzled on that; Vergil scanned the horizon to get his bearings. In the far distance the outline of a city, and between them, a wall of storms.

"So..." Dante stepped closer. There was something he began to say, then thought better of it. "...How will demons get across now?"

"Mundus will assign some other thrall the task of ferryman." So, he was back to playing his brother's tour guide, then. So be it. "Your concern for hell's infrastructure is noted."

"Yeah, yeah. Where are we?"

"Home."


	3. The Lustful

They'd had other weather stoppages before on their trip, for boiling blood rain and clouds that compressed the sky to ceiling-height and other inclement demon juju, but this was the first time Dante was sure he was going to have to spend the next three days picking sand out of his asshole.

To call it a sandstorm would have been like calling Nico's ride a minivan. The wind flung white-hot rock shrapnel so fast it'd shred your skin off in seconds. Dante'd made the mistake of opening his eyes once to see where they were going and had to be led by the hand like a preschooler by his brother to shelter while he grew a pair of new corneas.

'Shelter' being the leeward indent of a truck-sized demon vertebrae that must have belonged to somebody who'd had an even worse time in this wasteland than they were. There was barely enough room for the two of them--which was just as well, since every inch of Dante jabbing into Vergil probably wasn't going to get ripped off when the wind changed directions, at least.

"You sure this'll blow over?" Given the choice between shouting over the wind and whispering into his brother's ear, Dante opted for the former.

"It will pass," Vergil assured him in a long-suffering way, like he wasn't the one with his elbow halfway through Dante's ribcage.

That wasn't what Dante's brand new eyes told them when they resolved into focus: they told him it was pitch black with dust for miles, except everywhere the sand was on fire. "Well," suggested Dante, as he tried to make himself comfortable in a way that wasn't either pulling Vergil into his lap or wrapping himself around his brother like a pretzel, "Guess we've gotta find some way to kill the time."

Which was to say, find a way that wasn't their tried-and-true method of stabbing each other until they were all stabbed out, then stabbing each other again. All his brother seemed to have to say was a whole lot of nothing, and up this close and personal it was impossible not to notice that Vergil's jawline was still perfectly smooth after days without a razor, and even more impossible not to follow the curve of his now-bare throat down to his vest and wonder if the rest of him was the same, somehow. For some reason. It'd be easy to slide that zipper down and find out.

Did his vest have a zipper the last time Dante saw him? Did they make zippers in hell? Was there a factory? Who would need one?

Vergil could probably answer all of these very incisive questions, for sure, but the mystery was a sufficient stopgap distraction one inch of desperation shy of punching himself in the dick.

Because in pinning that one arm of Vergil's behind his head back on the boat he'd felt how rock-hard it was through the fabric of his jacket, seen a sliver of bare skin where it parted ways with Vergil's vest around the shoulder, felt him coiled and taut and heaving and flushed and holy hell damn that probably _wasn't_ a double entendre about his kid giving it back to him but. What. If. It. Was.

Taking down a cock-blocking sea monster while visualizing the bucket he kept in the back office after a weekend bender was something new to add to the old list of accomplishments. One that was, in retrospect, probably for the best. He should probably make sure Vergil wanted to kiss him or talk to him or really be around him for any other purpose than to serve as a whetstone for his katana before repeating the mistakes they made back when their blood was five parts Jack Daniels and nine parts testosterone.

No, that elbow was right where it belonged. Vergil wasn't going anywhere near his lap any time soon.

Dante cleared his throat. "You still owe me that story."

"Do I?" Was that Yamato digging into his hip, or was his brother just unhappy to see him?

"Yeah, you do. I would've won if your kid hadn't shown up." 

Definitely Yamato. "About what."

"You know what. About what you got up to in Fortuna."

It wasn't so dark Dante couldn't see his brother roll his eyes. "The same thing that you did. I investigated the Order. They did claim to worship our father, after all."

"Sure, sure." Dante dodged that feint, left open to needle him about what a piss poor job he'd done of that particular exercise, and found his way back to the thrust of things. "What _else_ did you get up to in Fortuna?"

"As you seem to have surmised," said Vergil without inflection, "I also had carnal knowledge of a woman."

"Atta boy." Dante slapped his brother's knee, or tried to, only to find his hand caught by Vergil's upturned palm. And trapped between wire-tight fingers. "What was she like? What moves did you make?"

Vergil wasn't giving him his hand back.

"I mean, did you make conversation? Buy her a drink? Or did you just Helm Breaker her into the bedroom?" Dante gave it a tug; without rolling on top of him it was impossible to get enough leverage.

"I expressed interest in her and we proceeded to intercourse in the normal manner." 

"So, missionary with the lights off, or cowgirl with a pillow over your face?" Time to change tactics: he stroked Vergil's palm down to the wrist with his thumb.

"Hm?" It was hard to tell two inches from a howling hurricane, but Dante was pretty sure he heard humour in Vergil's voice. Maybe he had all along. "You're asking me to be vulgar about the mother of my child."

"Yeah asshole, the kid you found out about a couple weeks ago and the chick you didn't even remember."

Vergil's counterattack was to return his gesture. Tenderly.

That was score one for Vergil, for sure, as Dante tried to project his libido onto the astral plane. Which is where it belonged in this scenario, along with his sight, sense of touch, and the sense of smell that had been so tantalizing from a hundred yards away that it had led him to the light of the end of this tunnel of bad decisions. Which had turned out to be a freight train, currently crushing him to the tracks with the full force of what had been the lingering scent of spilled blood on his gloves and on his old jacket that had grown fainter by the year. If he chewed his own hand off at the wrist, how long would it take to grow back?

Vergil seemed nice and comfortable.

Well, time to even the score. There was something about the memory of spending a week in the alley behind his shop the day he'd finally thrown out that jacket that cooled his jets enough to form rational thought, or something like it. Vergil'd been right about the wind, after all: it was dying down. No time like the present.

"Hey." Dante'd abandoned all hope of getting his hand back, so he squeezed it. "If I ask you a question, can I get a real answer? Just this once."

Vergil tucked his free hand up under his chin. Rested it on his thumb and index finger. His knuckles occluded his expression, but he sure took his sweet time with the answer. Dante was starting to think he wasn't going to get one when his brother finally spoke up. "Alright. With one caveat. And one condition."

"Caveat and condition away, big brother."

"There are things that I recall imperfectly. I may not be able to answer questions about them to your satisfaction."

With anyone else that might be a prelude to a cop-out, but Dante knew Vergil would have his own eyeballs sandblasted than admit weakness of any kind. What it meant that he was, was--nevermind. Barf bucket behind the office. "Fine by me."

"And I will do so only if I get to ask one of my own - and receive a real answer."

"Sure." Dante shrugged. Contrary to common misconception, it wasn't that he didn't have a sense of danger, it was just that danger so rarely came with any consequences.

"Very well." Vergil opened his palm and inclined it toward him. "Ask."

"I was serious. About you and Nero's mom. How'd you do it?"

That palm found its way back to Vergil's face. " _This_ is your question."

"You know what I mean. How'd you, you know--"

"I'm certain you can figure it out, given all the reference materials I saw in your office." Yep, he was laughing. Even if Dante couldn't hear it, he could see his shoulders shake.

"Look, I've been to bed with lots of ladies--"

"Whereupon you failed to realize that to 'sleep with' is a euphemism, apparently--"

"Shut up, jackass. I've done just about everything. More than you have, I bet." If he opened his mouth again, Dante would punch him. Vergil'd accepted this deal fair and square, after all. "Everything. _But_. Not _that_."

"Why?" Vergil asked, like Dante was the one under interrogation here.

"Because I - and _you_ \- could break a human's spine with one thrust if we weren't paying attention." Because touching them - even something as simple as shaking their hands - was like grabbing onto a sculpture made of frosting sugar and fairy dust. Hitting them was like trying not to punch a hole through a piece of wet newspaper; if he bit a human woman he could take half her face off with it, and the one time he'd squeezed his one-night lover's waist without the utmost care she'd been bruised for weeks. She'd slapped him, sobbed, and he found out later he'd put a hairline fracture in her pelvis. It was performing brain surgery with a toothpick at the best of times; sex was performing brain surgery with a toothpick while on the receiving end of a blowjob.

In retrospect Dante wasn't sure why the most obvious answer, that Vergil was aware of all that but just didn't give a shit, didn't occur to him.

Vergil nodded. "I suspect that the best way to give you a real answer to your question is by way of demonstration."

He continued, and Dante's heart resumed beating, "What is a tour for, after all, if not to take in some of the local colour? These are the outskirts of Mundus' true domain. As close as one can come to freedom without lawlessness. Many pleasure demons make their homes here, and will tender their services for a price."

"Trying to get me laid, huh?"

Vergil looked him up and down. "Do you object?"

"Not at all." Dante'd gotten more warmth and less judgment out of the three-year-old bag of peas in the back of his freezer. "But you're joking if you think somebody here is going to spread their legs for the sons of Sparda."

"These aren't millennia-old devil princes, these are whores. They've never met our father, let alone have a grudge against him. If your ego can withstand the blow: none of them will know who you are." 

"And you're supposed to be the smart one." That earned him those slit-narrow eyes again. "I wasn't talking about me. I was talking about you. Those hell hounds? They weren't after me - they were after you. I'm guessing one 'em took off to rat you out to whoever told them to pick up your scent. Little drummer boy back there called you a deserter."

Vergil offered him brief, slow, near silent applause. "How many hours did it take you to come to that conclusion, I wonder. You've unearthed my deepest secret: the King of Hell did not let me leave of his own accord."

"Didn't think to tell me that _before_ we crossed the soul soda Rubicon?" Or before he'd agreed to come here in the first place. Or at any goddamn point at any time during the past couple of weeks.

"I didn't think it needed to be said." Dante didn't realize that his breath had begun to steam up until Vergil added: "Dante. None of the demons I intend to seek will know this." 

"Boat guy did."

"Charon needed to know. He might have encountered me as I left. Rulers do not share power. Knowledge is power. Particularly knowledge that shows weakness. There are many who do not even know that he has withdrawn to consolidate, that his influence has waned, is that you defeated him. To them I will seem to be what I always was when they first learned of my existence."

Dante remained skeptical. "You don't look like you did the last time I saw you in the underworld to me."

"Don't I?" Vergil inclined his head; as Dante watched, the same black marks that had decorated V's skin emerged at his collar and just as quickly faded below the surface. In their wake they left cracks Dante now recognized as old wounds in a demon that were beyond its power to heal. The rest of Vergil's skin greyed; his veins blued; his eyes burned bright red. "Appearances can be deceiving."

The worst part was the smell. It was bad enough that it was nothing like him, not even a little bit. Would've been unsettling to stand beside a stranger Dante used to be able to feel from a mile away, to touch something and know he'd touched it, once. No, the worst part was it was a stink he knew, now: one he'd cut to pieces and dropped a whole castle on and had no right to permeate every part of something wearing his brother's face.

As fast as it had arisen the facade fell away, and Vergil looked the same as he had a second ago. With an oddly sympathetic look that didn't suit him much. "It's nothing more than an illusion, Dante. The Qliphoth fruit resto--"

"Neat trick. What excuse have you got cooked up for yours truly?" 

Somehow, he'd gotten his hand back. Vergil rubbed his own, and said: "Whereas that creature was created in our mother's image, you will have been created in mine. A very convincing replica. One could almost swear you really were half-human."

"Me passing for you, huh." Dante popped his collar, pushed his hair back, and scowled like a bus driver had pulled away five feet before he jogged to his stop. "Knowledge is power. So why do you keep kicking my ass no matter how many books I read?"

Vergil remained unmoved. "You're right. You're not very convincing. Perhaps it would better the other way around." 

Then his brother tested the wind - which was a lot less lethal than it had been an hour ago - stood up, and let it blow his hair into his face. Rubbed the bangs down so they were covering his eyes. Smoothed down his collar. Shadow boxed the air and shucked his chin with his knuckles.

Dante opened his mouth.

And shut it again when Vergil yanked his pants down a few inches to his hips. Did some readjustment. Then tugged up the front so that it bulged around his package.

Dante's "Hey there sexy thing, who are you, and what did you do with my brother?" came out less smoothly than he intended because he was laughing, and so was Vergil, and no really - who was this guy, and what had he done with his brother? Dante couldn't remember Vergil messing around like this since they were a couple of knee-high brats trying on their old man's clothing.

Didn't matter. Whatever it was the bad taste in his mouth was gone. When the hell storm passed and they struck out again across the still smoldering wasteland Vergil went incognito again and Dante didn't say a word about it. His brother'd fussily readjusted his clothing, of course, but he'd missed a spot: the very tops of his hipbones peeked out from under his vest when he moved. Sure, Dante should've mentioned it. Instead, he said: "Going to get some hookers, huh. And here I thought getting a tour from you would be all about lame trips to the library and showing me your katana collection."

"Pleased to sink to the level of my client's expectations." 

Now that he had a better look at it, sans sandscreen, that city Dante'd seen in the distance was more of a fortress. Or a stronghold. Or citadel? Castle? Keep? Dante realized he didn't know what the difference was, if any, and he could probably ask Vergil but Vergil was in the mood to be mouthy. Normally that would suit him just fine; what if it blew their cover? Anyhow it was a big building made out of stones with a watchtower and a wall around it. 

They made for the gate - is something still a gate if it's door-shaped, what is a gate, really, he'd have to save that one for later - on top of which crouched a barrel-chested, smooth-skinned purple demon with bat wings, goat's legs, and his entire dick out. 

Dante whistled. "Hard pass on this one, Vergil. I respect the strong-fat as much as the next guy, but you know I'm a sucker for twinks." 

He couldn't see his brother's side-eye glower from behind, only feel it. 

"WHO GOES THERE?" It - well _he_ , probably, but you never know - pointed a tooth-decorated spear at Dante in particular.

"Another servant of the king." Vergil sounded completely unruffled. 

It leaned down, sniffed him, and snarled. Dante wasn't sure how he was supposed to react to that, so he flashed his most charming smile and proferred a rose. 

It sniffed that, too. "PRINCE BERIAL'S WEAPON. YOU MAY PASS." Well, that dick was almost long enough to drag in the dirt. "WITH CAUTION. THERE MAY BE FOLLOWERS OF THE USURPER AMONG US."

"Usurper?" Where had Dante heard that before?

"A NAMELESS DEMON, SPAWN OF NONE, HAS CULTIVATED THE QLIPHOTH TO CHALLENGE THE KING."

"So I've heard," Vergil said drily, and strode through the gate ahead of them. 

"Thanks tips." Dante tossed the rose to the gate demon and followed him. "Guess they don't get the radio down here," he added when they were out of earshot. "That's yesterday's news."

"What did I tell you about information? If they hear anything at all about how 'Urizen' was defeated, it will be that some servant of Mundus did it." 

Past the wall there was the big building, other little buildings, and a street full of demons doing the perp walk. Demons he recognized, and demons he didn't: a fire horse sidling up on a sexy salamander. A Lusachia and Baphomet hovering around Fury with a six-pack that would make a stone statue jealous. If he hadn't seen it once before - demons not aligned under one master not trying to rip any outsider's throat out, or each other's for that matter - he would have gawked. Had gawked, the first time. No, they were just going about their business. 

Dante garnered glances of curiosity and occasional hostility, depending on how close he passed by. Vergil got a mixture of grudging wariness and contempt so absolute he was surprised they hadn't all been sliced into a thousand pieces ten seconds ago. 

"Got a place in mind?" Otherwise, undercurrent of incipient violence aside, the awkward tension of the crowd was much the same as taking a stroll outside a strip club.

"Clearly." 

To his surprise, the building his brother picked thrummed with the promise of bone-rattling bass Dante could feel in the soles of his boots. Vergil slipped into the dimness ahead of him without introduction.

There were definitely demons Dante'd rather watch his parents getting it on than see fucking - most of them, if he was honest - but none of them seemed to be employed at this particular establishment. If not for Yamato's reliably ominous aura he would've lost sight of Vergil entirely in the crush of glistening, glowing, _perfectly_ curved and angled bodies he stepped into. Succubi slithered on tabletops; an incubus beside him had his back arched in open invitation, down on all fours; rusalka spun and danced and so did the coloured lights on their skin, which cast scores of silhouettes that danced along the walls in perfect timing.

But Dante, as soon as he saw her, only had eyes for the siren. On a raised platform above the rest, leaned against the central pillar of the place, she stroked lines with sharp nails across her bare skin in time with the music and an instant later he realized she _was_ the music. The beat was how she tapped her feet as she swayed. The bass was how she moved; the melody was the patterns she created with her fingers and she brought it all together by singing, soundlessly.

Vergil touched his shoulder and said: "Wait here."

There wasn't a chance in hell of that, though, was there? She was playing her heart out and everybody in the joint was listening to it like it was elevator ambient.

As soon as Vergil was out of sight Dante leapt lightly up onto the platform opposite her, his back to the same pillar. His hips found the same rhythm as her footfalls; when she craned her body around the side to peer at her interloper he leaned the other way, thumb on his belt. When she followed him, he strutted ahead of her. She lunged, and he spun - all she caught was his coat, which was now in her hands.

"Hey babe." Dante tipped his hat to her. "You deserve a backup dancer."

Her bright white fangs glowed violet in the dimly hued lights around them. She slowed and he slowed too; hooked his thumb up under his shirt and inched higher with every beat, the small of his back arched against the pillar.

She rounded on him and traced the contours of the muscles he exposed with those nails, leaving only the bass line and percussion. "Do you know how to play?" She asked sweetly. Blood beaded at the tip of her smallest finger.

He ducked her grip before she could shred any more of his skin off; her nails caught in the fabric of his shirt and he let her have it. She lunged for him again, faster this time, and he spun away with both hands on the pillar; she jumped and he climbed out of her reach. She moved faster and faster and so did the song; he whipped around while her back was turned and reached down, hanging from the pillar by hooked ankles. Caught her by the waist and scooped her up into his arms.

"Sure I do, sweetheart." 

Her skin made music for him too. Didn't take him a second to find the right notes and he rocked out his solo over her curves, upside-down, spinning them both around and down the pillar until they hit the floor, softly, in a pile of limbs and shed clothing.

From there Dante spotted the inverted image of his brother: seated, eyes straight forward, and drinking something the colour of the river from a glass like he'd never get another one.

"We'll do a duet some other time," Dante told the siren, and disentangled himself. After he hopped down from the stage she kicked his shirt and jacket toward him and kept on playing like a true pro.

In Dante's head, his next move went a little something like this: he slid smoothly into Vergil's lap, Vergil licked his lips all coy, maybe stroked the blood the siren'd left near his navel and licked that up too. Fed Dante right from his own glass, while Dante locked his legs around Vergil's waist, guided them to the ground, and asked: "You want the next dance?"

It would've been great. Really. So much better than getting one handful of Vergil's perfect imitation of clammy, withering flesh and a noseful of the same spellwright that had torched their home when he was eight, recoiling so hard he smacked Vergil's arm, and dumping the rest of that drink into his lap.

Dante did do his best to soak it up with his shirt. 

"Dante," came the growl that he one hundred percent deserved, "We have a private room."

Vergil carried his sword in an executioner's grip as he led the way, and even a wink from the siren wasn't enough to lift Dante's spirits.

The sight of two succubi with bodies hotter than smokestacks helped a lot, though. Lounged leisurely along a bed that looked more like an altar. Entwined. At first glance they looked translucent: he could see through every part of their bodies right down to the sheets - even the features on their faces - one formed from water and the other from crystal clear ice. At second glance, they were naked. At third glance, they were identical.

"Sisters?" You could say a lot of things about Dante's brother, but you couldn't say he wasn't gentleman of refined tastes.

"Choose whichever you prefer." 

Dante shook his head; waved him onward. "Age before beauty." 

Vergil chose the ice one, because - well, because of course he did. Took the chair, politely, and she sat on his knees, leaving the bed to Dante. Who flopped back on it and tried to fling his arm around his entertainer for the evening, but she beat him to the punch. Her flesh was warm and slick and impossibly smooth; she stroked his chest with one hand and cupped his chin with the other.

"I'm Semiramis. And you are?" Her voice sent the sensation of stroking his fingers through a hot bath straight up his spine. 

"He has no name, he is but two days old," Vergil murmured smugly before Dante could say anything. Come to think of it, they should've laid out some ground rules beforehand: no weapons, no teleporting, and no poetry.

Semiramis chuckled; velvety smooth tendrils of hair whispered damply over Dante's skin like summer raindrops. "Nelo tells me you've never known another's touch." 

"Did he now?" Dante regretted not dumping more of his drink on him.

"Don't worry, I'll take good care of you." 

She thumbed his mouth open to kiss him; Dante returned the gesture as well as he could, what with the other succubus reaching right into Vergil's pants an armslength away. Well, holy shit: Vergil really was just going for it. No kiss, no cuddle. The window on deciding whether or not he really wanted to see his brother get his dick wet was closing much more rapidly on Dante than he'd expected.

The other succubus left frost stains on his jacket where she squeezed Vergil's arms and sighed, pleasantly; Vergil took her hands, removed them, and set them back into his lap. Dante couldn't see _exactly_ what was going on, but from the tilt of Vergil's jaw and his increasingly ragged breathing, he didn't really need to. Vergil gave her what had to be less than a minute before he pulled her forward by the waist, and - yep, yep her hips sure were as see-through as the rest of her. 

The snap of his belt undone, and the rustle of clothing; something wet and tight cinched around Dante's cock, but that was just her fist.

_"If you want to play rough, it has to be with your brother."_

Those words of wisdom had taken on whole new vistas of meaning when they'd outgrown wooden swords and skinned knees. Dante'd remembered them always: as much as attractive humans could delight the eyes they disappointed his other senses. Fragile and fearful, he felt for them, they felt like porcelain in his hands, and he remembered how easily they could be broken. How many times he'd seen them broken, by the lowest and meanest of demons he could've pried the wings off by ten. Shattered into wet, shimmering pieces, never to be put back together again. The scent of their pain and terror and how much more it meant when they died.

Demons, demons he could fuck, but it never meant anything. Raw sensation, raw need, dead-eyed pleasure. A dominance display: Trish's silent judgement over the fact that, despite being the more powerful of the two of them, _this_ was what he wanted.

Somewhere along the line he'd noticed that his brother wasn't made of glass. Had'd always known it, never carried the thought through to its conclusion. That something stirred within him every time Vergil shrugged off his shirt to spar, made his blood hot in a way that wasn't the thrill of the contest. It was close, but not quite; touching him wasn't like touching himself, not at all - not once he'd noticed the angle of Vergil's jaw, and his cheekbones, and his nose, the corners of his eyes when he was angry and how they softened and went wide so rarely but when they _did_... The curve of his waist, his throat, his lips; his lips were different, he didn't bite them, what if Dante _bit them_ \--

They'd trashed his old apartment, the first time. The one Dante'd rented - well, squatted in, really - before he bought his shop. They'd messed around before, back when they were kids, kids who didn't know what it meant. Didn't know it was wrong. Still didn't. But they knew something else, when they were somewhere closer to grown: that there were stakes to the fight there'd never been before. There was liquor and a shared bed and holes punched through drywall and Dante'd nearly kicked his brother's skull in half and Vergil'd hit him back so hard he'd stopped breathing for minutes but there was _something else_. And before he knew it he was balls deep inside his brother, and vice versa, and that hadn't made things any better between them at all.

It had meant something, though.

Semiramis' moist lips on his earlobe brought him back to the present. "I can be whatever you desire," she whispered. She nudged his head down from where she'd followed his gaze - fixed on Vergil's parted lips in side-profile - to her lap. Which rippled, shifted, and revealed a glistening facsimile of the shaft he was trying his very best not to stare at.

"No, thanks," Dante grunted, "I'll keep it in mind, though. I just need a drink."

He'd heard his brother get off before, and as much as he wished it didn't, it sounded exactly the same this time. Bitten, breathy snarls. There were ways to get other noises out of him; this wasn't the time or place for a tutorial. Semiramis rolled off him to fetch a bowl of fleshy, red, jewel-like drops. Dante palmed his cock half-heartedly in her absence. 

"Your master must be very pleased with him." She sat beside him and offered it.

"Because he's giving us time off to get laid?" Dante plucked one from her fingers. Held it up to the light. Opaque, glittering, the colour of old dried blood. He tossed it into his mouth with a shrug.

"Because he has his voice--" she said, or something like it; if there was anything else Dante lost it amidst the spiral of impressions that flooded from his tastebuds to his gut to his heart to his brain.

_Nobody likes me, but everybody's too nice to tell me._

_Use your turn signal you son of a bitch where'd you learn to drive?!_

_I'm never going to find anybody like her again._

_This is the best night of my life!_

Emotions. _Human_ emotions. Each with its own unique flavour. They fired up his senses; roused the power inside of him like nothing he'd felt before short of fighting, and killing. He felt a hunger he'd never sated whetted for the first time in his life. 

Dante rolled over and retched.

Semiramis patted him gently on the back. "Is he too young?"

"No." Vergil was wiping his forehead with his sleeve. "Just weak."

Those should have been fighting words. Would have been, if there wasn't a girl on Vergil's lap. 

"You don't _feel_ weak," Semiramis soothed. "You're a strong boy."

"Thank you." Dante saw Vergil loosen his collar. "Yours, as promised."

For a second Dante thought Vergil was going to pay her back by finally showing some skin; instead, the succubus buried her incisors up to the root in the side of his brother's neck. Her icy tongue flicked out to lap up whatever spilled. Drew it into her mouth so she could drink it down. Vergil shivered.

Dante's instinctive growl was quiet; Semiramis must have heard it, because she laughed again. "Yes, you should try it yourself sometime. Not quite the same as a real, full-blooded human, but the best you'll get down here.

Vergil's blood smelled like him.

The succubus licked him clean when she was finished. Semiramis offered Vergil the same bowl and he popped the thoughts of others into his mouth like penny candy. 

"You didn't need to wait." Vergil eyed him; his teeth were stained dark carmine. "Unless you found that instructive."

"Yeah, yeah, just give me a second here." Unwittingly mowing down on somebody's soul had cost Dante at least a few levels of hard-on. Didn't help that Vergil hadn't been talking smack after all: he'd hardly even touched her. Hardly even _moved_. A teenage virgin could have daintily deflowered herself on that dick and lived to tell the tale. "Since when do you not need foreplay, huh," Dante muttered under his breath, " _You_ were always the rusty chainsaw."

Semiramis heard that, and inclined her head, uncomprehending.

"Takes a while to get going, but he gets the job done."

"I've never had the pleasure of Nelo Angelo's company before."

"Nelo Angelo," Dante echoed to change subject, because Vergil's fingertips had settled on Yamato's hilt and he had something in the line of one swift blade arc that he didn't want to lose. "I've heard 'Angelo' before." Not just in Agnus' research; elsewhere in the underworld, too. "What's that mean?"

Everyone in the room stared at him like he'd just asked them how to wipe his own ass.

"Oh, young one," Semiramis broke the silence, "It means servant--"

"It means slave," Vergil cut in.

"It comes from a very old word for our people," she demurred. "From an ancient legend: that once we were all slaves to a master with power beyond reckoning. Until the first demon rose up in rebellion and led us to freedom."

Vergil's expression told Dante everything he needed to know about what he thought of that story. He snorted. "At least I get going _eventually_."

"You were killing the mood," Dante snapped back, and it wasn't entirely a lie. Right now his brother was a stranger, who stank like sweat and sex and his brother's blood.

This was going to be easy, come to think of it: with Vergil's gaze boring right through him he'd be lucky to stay hard enough to get the job done, let alone get carried away. Dante shut his eyes and gripped his cock like he could squeeze the life back into it.

He'd be able to pick up the scent of his brother's blood from halfway across a city. Spot it in a crime scene with a dozen victims. Neither man nor demon. He knew it as well as his own: from where it was smeared across the faucets after they fought as children; from when it had soaked into the scrap of Dante's shirt that torn off to bandage Vergil's hand when that dog had bitten him; from the sheets after he'd left Dante's bed.

From how the weapons he'd used in Temen-ni-gru were so coated in it he could pick up the faintest traces on them to this day. A rust he could never scrape off no matter how hard he scrubbed.

So they were locked up or gone.

Except Rebellion. Except himself. Those weren't going anywhere. So he'd dragged them both into the shower with a bottle of whiskey, in the clothes he'd worn that night, and sobbed until he'd passed out.

As he got older, and wiser, he'd check first on nights like that to make sure there was any hot water left.

Dante could've remembered him alive, instead. The imperious tilt of his jaw even as his pale cheeks were bright with arousal, the sound he made groaning Dante's name through gritted teeth, the yielding tautness of the smooth skin over his hips and stomach and chest, the rough rasp of suede when he left his gloves on; he looked so young in these thoughts - they were both so young - and a 40-something could only jerk off to memories of a 19-year-old so many times before he felt his age.

Dante could've conjured up images of the fully grown version, whatever that looked like under the black funeral shroud in which he'd wrapped himself so tightly. His face had aged; so had Dante's. Worse, probably. The mature version of his brother who laughed without malice and had darker circles under his eyes than Dante's a month after Mallet Island.

Dante should've stayed out in the wasteland holding his hand.

"Let me," Semiramis purred and pried his fingers away. That's right: Dante wasn't alone here. Didn't have to do anything if he didn't want to. She straddled him, languid. Draped her body across his; her hair and her hips and the tips of her breasts were the temperature of the shower twenty minutes before it would run cold.

All he had to do was lay back and let muscle memory take the wheel: she was so wet, and so willing, that it felt like cranking himself with a loose fist under water when she eased his cock inside of her. He was alone in the bathtub and the weight was liquid.

Yeah, he could get into this. Wouldn't be the first time he'd blunted the edges of these feelings with manual sensation. She was good at this, too; great technique and better tradecraft, giving it up for a lost cause the first time he turned his face away from her lips. So good he could ignore the itch underneath his skin that stirred, same as it always did, when he indulged his basest instincts. That second set of senses with which he saw the world. The one his brother had awakened, that he'd spent the rest of his life coaxing back to fitful slumber with poison and promises of blood-letting. They'd made their truce over the years, it and Dante; in bed with a stranger was the last place it was wanted. This time, Dante was sure, he could strangle it back to sleep with memories.

Then he made the mistake of opening his eyes. 

To any human onlooker Dante had no doubt this looked like a good time. Two appreciative customers getting their rocks off with two very amenable working girls: Semiramis had tantalizing teardrop tits that bounced when her back arched, and any other time Dante'd be really into the way he could see his own dick. No, no, he was still into it. Even Vergil seemed pleased; about getting a new glass, at least, enough to let her sister get back into his pants. Dante couldn't think of anything that would make somebody look like more of an asshole than sipping some kind of soul wine while ignoring a hot girl on your lap. It suited his brother so well he could have laughed.

Viewed the crucible of demon logic, on the other hand--she was hungry. Human blood was the source of demon's power, and Vergil's - tainted as it was - had given her exactly that. That second self showed Dante her disgust for his brother so clearly her smile looked like a sneer. If she didn't fear his strength, and the strength of the demon who kept him, she would've devoured him already. She would kill any spawn they made, the way Vergil should have been killed the day he was born to keep something so weak, twisted, and aberrant from coming into the world.

Semiramis didn't despise him any less. Vergil's prowess kept her in check from taking Dante - from breaking him, owning him, making him theirs. So far as they knew he was a brand new demon, ripe for service to whoever could lay claim.

All of this was wrong: Dante was the stronger, she should be serving _him_. They both should. And every part of that second set of instincts screamed that Vergil was a threat, a challenge, one that had to be dealt with _immediately_. In this state he could see through the paper-thin veil of magic Vergil wore - Yamato's presence alone announced the lie to anyone who could hear it. Vergil had never bowed to him, never knelt to him, never admitted defeat or Dante's dominance.

Dante tried to assuage the beast with rational thoughts: Vergil'd never beaten him in a real fight, not since they were nineteen, not when it really mattered. Which was true. It was true. It _was_ true, so all _three_ of them should serve him. He should take them all--

"Control yourself." Vergil's stern voice, beside Dante's ear as his brother prised the fingers that had half-formed talons off Semiramis' thighs and pinned them above Dante's head. 

She tossed her hair over one shoulder nonchalantly. "I like it when they've got a little fight in them."

Dante could smell her pain-- _weakness_ \--and her legs bled water.

Vergil settled on the bed behind him, his weight on Dante's wrists. His vest was open to the collarbone and his trousers open to his hips. So much bare skin and healing wounds, how _dare_ he make demands. 

Dante snapped at him with teeth; Vergil shoved his thumb into Dante's mouth.

The blood itself did nothing for him - Dante had more than enough human blood of his own - it was the taste that pacified him, in this state. The texture of broken bone. How it crunched, and healed, and crunched again.

Dante wrestled his eyes shut. Vergil had to have the same thoughts he did. Nero was proof that he'd mastered them at an age when Dante was still kicking holes through the wall whenever he stubbed his toe. If his brother could do it, he could do it. This was nothing more than a transaction: pleasure for pride. It felt good. She felt good.

Semiramis' smooth, fluid weight draped across his chest.

_Mine._

"Thank you for soothing him for us, Nelo." 

The bed shifted with added weight; the scent of the other succubus as she drew nearer.

_Mine._

"Spawn can be so troublesome."

Fabric rustled. 

Drops of blood dripped, one by one, onto Dante's face.

_Mine._

His brother began to make those other noises.

_Mine. Mine._ Mine. "MINE."

Distantly, Dante could hear that his voice had changed from a human hiss to a deep roar. Could feel that his skin crackled. That his breath steamed with the flames in his lungs. It didn't matter. He couldn't bear this.

Semiramis struggled; he slipped out of her. She wrenched herself away; he wrenched himself free. In spite of all the limbs that tried to hold him back. Why was she stronger now? No matter.

He _seized_ and he _pinned_ and he _ground_ with all his strength the body heaving beneath him, until he struck home again, because he _needed_ this and he would _have_ this and they would _give_ him this--

"Dante."

Vergil's breathing was ragged.

" _Dante._ "

He could taste Vergil's sweat and the waist he held was much too broad.

Dante opened his eyes. And froze. Inches from his brother's face. He braced for Yamato's bite in the split second it would take for Vergil to reach for it, draw it, and plunge through his heart.

Vergil rolled them both over with his knee. Slumped against Dante's shoulder, panting. He looked concerned. "Why did you stop?"

Semiramis and her sister scrambling out of the room and the cry that went up after should've been enough to answer his question. There was no way Dante could hide what he really was when somebody got a glimpse of his demon form. 

_Dante. Blood of Sparda. Kingslayer. Legendary butcher of demons._

"Flawless plan there, big bro." Squeezing Vergil's shoulder did not make the situation feel any less absurd.

"You're forty years old. How was I to know _sex_ would trigger you?" Dante couldn't tell if he was amused, disappointed, or both.

"Because I _told_ you it woul-nnghd." Dante thought really would have to punch himself in the dick to extricate himself but his kindly older brother did it for him by hopping out of his lap without so much as a 'thanks for the ride'.

Vergil clothing righted itself with the same neat trick Trish used. Damn, he had to learn how to do that one of these days. Rather than gingerly experimenting with exactly how much of his fly he could close and still do up the top button while Vergil held the door shut with his back.

Too bad there were demons here who could rip the whole roof off.

"Well, Dante. Do we stand and fight, or do we flee?"

That was a serious question, but, "All things considered." That'd have to hold. That would hold, right? "We should get the hell out of Dodge."

Two cuts and one solid kick made the window large enough to leap out of, which Vergil did without a second glance. Dante snatched his shirt and jacket off the floor and followed him backwards, ducked under a scythe that brought the whole wall down.

Dante landed on his feet; a flash of blue behind him mid-air meant that Vergil had taken wing. Dante didn't really have the energy for it right then, but what was he going to do? Ask for a nap and a cigar?

He let his own sword strike him in the chest with a tired grunt. If he didn't use his full power he'd never be able to keep up. He reveled in the heady rush of fire that exploded through his veins as they became one; he knew it was going to last about thirty seconds.

Better make it count. Vergil was already ahead of him, well above the fortress and beyond the reach of any other demon who'd taken flight, Dante included. It took the furious beating of all six wings in a graceless sprint to catch up. Vergil glided out toward the wasteland. In the distance there was another storm.

Dante scanned the ground for a place to take shelter when the inevitably plummeted.

Vergil kept going. Right for the wall of burning sand.

Dante tugged on his tail. 

"If we make it past that, no one can follow," came the irritated echo.

"We can't make it past that."

"Hmph. Speak for yourself."

But Dante was, in fact, speaking for himself.

In his defense he held onto it as long he could before that fire sputtered out for lack of fuel. A good couple of seconds. Inertia and aerodynamics carried him forward a few more before the other laws of physics caught up with him and he arced groundward. His stomach rose to the level of his esophagus and the next few months of Dante's life flashed before his eyes: he was going to break every bone in his body when he hit the ground, the storm would flay his skin off, and he would lay there healing and being flayed and healing and being flayed until he was buried by enough sand to get better. Or, something would eat him. Six of one, half dozen of the other. He'd been eaten before; seemed like it was about time to repeat the experience.

Vergil caught his human form effortlessly. White-blue limbs cinched tight around his torso. Barbed tail curled around the ankle of his boot.

Dante felt his body jerked as Vergil rode a current of air upward. And upward. And _way_ upward, up above the storm, where Dante could see orange lights flare like oil drum fires amidst a city skyline at night. Where he could see that the sky here had a ceiling: it was an enormous cave, the rocky stalactites so high above the floor they were a grey carpet viewed from below, one he'd mistaken for clouds.

Vergil swooped between them. It only made sense - he'd had more rest. More pent up demon vigor. Now he could blow his whole load on carrying the two of them.

The farther they flew, though, the more Dante was forced to admit Vergil could hold onto this form longer than he could. Always could. Whether it was because he'd had it for so many more years, or he'd lived down here, who knew. Dante could ask, but that would be admitting he was a little in awe of it. That they could sail for miles and forget they ever needed to touch the ground.

The storm ended next to a black line on the horizon. Which resolved into a split that neatly divided the desert from a yawning void of nothing Dante could parse with human eyes, and all his other senses failed him. Vergil brought them downward, nearing the edge of the violent winds.

And dropped out of the sky without warning the instant they were clear. 

They hit the ground together with Vergil's arms still around his waist; the impact knocked them apart and Dante rolled a good couple of yards and got a good couple of servings of sand in the face before he skidded to a stop.

He sat up and groaned. Popped his neck back into place to make it easier for the nerves to knit together. Coughed up some bloody dirt. Spat it up. Looked over to Vergil, who was on his knuckles and knees. Dante could just make out the faint gasps he tried to stifle. Didn't need to; he could feel degree to which his brother had just burned his power down to a cinder.

The gesture was futile, but, "You should rest." 

Vergil used Yamato's scabbard as a cane to struggle to his feet. Dante wouldn't have batted an eyelash at it before; now the movement reminded him so much of V it quelled the urge to tackle him and make him see reason. "We're almost free of them." 

Vergil led the way. Dante followed. Along the line in the sand that Dante could now see was the lip of a chasm that plunged, bottomless and boundless, into dark. 

Dante spat the next mouthful over the edge. "What's that?"

"The abyss. Where hell begins in earnest." Vergil's stiff steps were blood in the water; he needed to heal, badly. 

Dante kept his sword drawn, resting on his shoulder. His shirt and jacket he held draped over the other. "So, what, we jump?"

"I wouldn't advise it." Vergil's voice was dusky with dark humour. "You never know what will be waiting when you wake up."

The old bones Dante spotted along their path grew in number as they continued. Some had skulls the size of sedans and others the size of soccer balls. Bleached white, moudly grey, gleaming black. Some close enough to humanoid to unsettle and others so far from it they unsettled even more. These were all demons, though. Which mean whoever'd killed them hadn't drained their essences to dust for power, they'd left them to rot like so much strung up meat.

"I've got a great feeling about this." 

Vergil gestured forward, to where the bones lay piled so high they formed a mound. On top of which they had been beaten together into a shape unmistakable for anything other than what it was: a throne. "Behold, the seat of King Minos, our Emperor's concierge."

"King, eh? I thought the underworld already had one." Or several, these days.

"King of the Wasteland, before Mundus rose up to lay his claim." Vergil began to climb it. Dante shadowed close behind, eyes on every unsteady foothold. His brother had long since let his own features show through; false grey flesh had vanished to show pale skin scored with scratches. His hair was badly mussed; sharp strands of it brushed his forehead. His lips were parted to breathe through his mouth. "He knelt, rather than fight. Mundus accepted his surrender."

"That was nice of him." If Vergil stumbled, Dante would catch him. 

Unfortunately, he didn't. "Loyal servants only add to your power. A fact you've used to your own advantage." Vergil nodded over his shoulder to where Balrog would sit on Dante's forearms if he was summoned. "Now Minos guards the first of his gates. And serves as a shortcut for those with business below. His body connects to the entirety of the underworld."

"And we've got an invitation?"

"Of course." Vergil thumbed Yamato past its sword catch. "To any party we wish."

Once a coward, always a coward? Those were the problem-solving skills Dante liked to see.

Vergil swayed when he reached the top. Dante moved to steady him by the hips, but he sat down heavily on the seat of the throne instead. Laid the heel of his boot on Dante's outstretched hand and pressed it to the bones below. Rested his cheek on his knuckles. His eyes met Dante's, and they were alight.

Blood in the water. Spilled whiskey in the bathtub. Fingerless gloves twisted in sheets. The sting in the palm of his hand. The way his collar kissed the back of his neck when he tugged it upright. "What do we do now?"

"We wait--"

Dante moved first; Vergil was faster. Vergil was always faster. He crushed their lips together with fingers knotted through Dante's hair. Dante held the back of his head to keep it from smacking to the armrest when they fell. 

Fuck it: Dante's shirt and coat landed _somewhere_ that hopefully wasn't the abyss behind them. His sword vanished; Vergil let Yamato drop lightly to the ground. Their hands were needed elsewhere, because his brother's skin was so hot to the touch and so smooth under his callouses and _just as hairless_ as he'd imagined it would be and why he didn't know, he didn't know, Vergil's tongue was in his mouth and he didn't know anything anymore. 

He should stop and study and caress but this spring had been wound up so tight it had snapped and now it was spinning out of control with more force than it had ever been built for. Dante snarled with the monumental effort it took to pull away long enough to try to ask how far Vergil wanted this to go; Vergil snapped the top button of his pants off and closed his fist around Dante's cock.

Vergil held his jaw with two fingers with the other hand. Dante was inches from those sharp-narrow eyes again, lips hooked upward one-sided like the tip of his blade. " _Mine_."

God yeah. Any time. Dante dragged Vergil's pants down to his knees, his brother's calves splayed over the other armrest. He wasn't wearing anything underneath them; he never had. Dante'd rib him about it if it wasn't making his cock throb right this second. A secret only he knew, that nobody else would ever know. 

No, that wasn't true. He'd run into proof it wasn't in Fortuna. Run it to proof it wasn't _here_.

Vergil's fist in his hair tightened. "What are you waiting for?"

Good point. Vergil was so ready there was a smear of slippery precum where his tip laid flat against his stomach. Dante lapped it up with his tongue. "You know what you said about rushing in blindly... What if I tried something else?"

Vergil stopped stroking him and started reaching for Yamato.

Point made. Dante swallowed his head and Vergil relaxed; Dante reveled in the shivers that ran through his body. Probed him open with a few fingers and breathed, "Shit," out through clenched teeth as his cock pulsed so hard his balls went tight: holy hell Vergil was still good to go. Still stretched, still so swollen Dante could _feel_ it. 

'You know you can just tell me when you're horny' would have to wait for another time - if Dante killed the mood right now he might as well throw himself off that cliff. He set his feet back down on the pile. Shimmied his pants down far enough to get his whole length out. Eased one of Vergil's legs off the armrest and set it aside so he could settle between them. Braced his tip against his rim. 

Right on the edge again. Vergil's head tilted back, defiant. Fragile. That same vertigo.

This time he leaned forward. He met with no resistance at all, just pure pleasure, and soon their lower bodies were flush so were their chests and Vergil kissed him again and tasted the precum on his lips and Vergil tasted _exactly the same_ as he always had and Dante started snapping their hips together. 

Vergil's nails were a whole lot blunter this time, though.

It had been a _long_ time and not a whole lot of practice; Dante'd read somewhere that muscle memory only lasted about seven years and it'd been three times that. All he had left were sights and sounds. So he chased the sounds his brother made, shifted him until annoyance turned to delight and soft rasps of his name. 

" _Dante_."

Dante kissed the sweat that pooled in the hollow of Vergil's throat.

Vergil growled into his ear; it sent shivers down his spine to his toes and the tip of his cock. Damn, he felt so good. 

" _Dante_."

"Yeah, Vergil?" Dante slowed to a slow grind, savouring the sensation. "What do you need?"

Vergil grabbed the back of his neck. " _More._ "

The flash of silver as Vergil drew his blade one-handed was just enough warning for Dante to get his hand up in time. To have it buried between the sinew of his finger bones instead of his ribs. 

They stared at one another for one whole heartbeat before Dante triggered.

The voice inside him that screamed for him to take, take, _take_ was silent because he _was_ taking and it was right, and good, and he could smell the sweat from every pore and feel every muscle fiber in his brother's body that tightened. Vergil should have joined him, that human body had to be stretched to its limits. Would have joined him if he'd had the strength.   
Vergil slammed his fist against the backboard; bone dust scattered amidst the scratches on Dante's back. "I need _more_."

Dante pinned his hips and gave him exactly what he asked for. Now the body beneath him couldn't resist even if it wanted to, short of cutting his head off. Dante folded it up, covered it, trapped it with wings, savoured the rawness that was tight, wet, pliable heat. Pitched cries of distress gradually shifted to ecstasy.

Vergil's skin was bright from his cheekbones down to his nipples. Dante felt him hitch his knees up around Dante's waist.

"How much more can you take?" Dante's caged roar rattled in the back of his throat.

" _Everything_." 

Dante thrust in deep. Over and over, until he could feel Vergil start to shake. Until he could feel him arch; go rigid; hiss his name. 

Until his jaw was slack and his lips were wet with saliva and there was come on his stomach. 

Dante tilted Vergil's mouth open. Damn, he tasted _just_ the _same_.

Vergil sucked on his fangs, dazed. 

His brother couldn't kick him off like this; Dante pulled out and came into his own hand rather than risk taking Yamato through the teeth.

Vergil kissed his forehead.

Dante wiped his hand on the armrest. Yanked the sword out of the other. He'd never quite gotten the hang of flicking all the blood off like Vergil did before he sheathed it so he set it down beside where his brother lay curled up with exhaustion. 

A black tendril snaked along the back of his boot.

Dante straightened. Hiked his pants back up and cinched his belt a little tighter to compensate for the missing buttons. "You, sir, have _impeccable_ timing. Way better than the last guy."

There were more of them. Hundreds more. They slithered around the bones and through the eye sockets of skulls. They emerged everywhere he looked throughout the pile. All leading back to the ledge. 

"Yep, reading the room is a rare skill these days. And I've gotta respect a man who recycles. I can't even remember what box bones go in."

Dante spotted his shirt - or what was left of it - next to his coat and all his weapons, near the bottom of the pile. Well out of reach. Didn't matter. Devil Sword Dante would do for this one.

Dante turned around to take in the freak show. Not too bad, not too bad: half-man, lower body a writhing mass of serpents of varying sizes as far as the could see. Many had wriggled through the heap of bones; others had wormed their way into the wall of chasm; more trailed down below him. Must be how he climbed. The last few were wrapped around his head like a crown.

"YOU HAVE DEFILED MY HOME."

"Defiled is... a strong word." Dante ducked the first snake that went for this throat; spread his hands. "Consider it blessed! Twins are lucky."

"Dante," Vergil snarled quietly and reached for his weapon.

Dante waved him away. "Relax. I got this." Telling him he was in no shape to fight would just get him riled.

Two more the size of his torso exploded through the mound, shattering skull into shrapnel. Dante launched himself off, flipped between them, and landed sitting on another closer to the ground.

He crossed one leg over his knee. "Besides, it's your lucky day. We're not even here to kill you. We only need to hitch a ride."

The pile itself began to rumble. 

"I AM NO TRAITOR."

"Whoa whoa whoa, never said you were." Sure enough, Minos'd withdrawn scores of them and they were coiled, ready to strike. "Just that when you've got this much found art shit it all starts looking like a junk heap."

He was surrounded on every side and above. So Dante dropped backward the instant they lunged, one knee still hooked around the tentacle on which he sat, and let them all smack into each other. 

He came back up with a spiral of summoned swords that sliced the ends of them with enough left over to protect his back while he charged the center, a solid streak of red that stopped just short of skewering Minos through the heart.

"VERY... WELL. I WILL TREAT WITH YOU."

"Thought you might." Dante cocked his head; shouldered his sword.

"PAY MY PRICE AND I WILL SERVE YOU."

"That kinda depends how high it is. My brother probably wouldn't give you the shirt off his back, but he probably would give you his firstborn."

"WHEN THE TWO WORLDS WERE ONE I WAS CALLED THE SIN EATER. YET I HAVE NOT TASTED MORTAL THOUGHTS IN AEONS. FEED ME YOUR GUILT."

"Uh." Dante glanced back at Vergil, who shrugged. "Okay, sure. Why not."

Small tendrils unwound themselves from around Minos' body and swam toward him. These hummed with the darkest violet hue and began to coil themselves around Dante's wrists, ankles, and throat. "This looks like the start of a bad hentai." Not a big deal; he was pretty sure he could rip them all off.

Minos, Vergil, the cliff, the bones, the sand - everything - vanished from view.

_The last glimpse he ever had of his mother's face through the slats of the closet she'd shut him in. With older eyes he can see the fear in it, though she seemed very brave to him as a child. The panic, the anguish that overrides it all that her other child is still out there, suffering. That forces her to go back, when she could've lived if she'd fled. Lived with him._

YOU LET YOUR OWN MOTHER DIE.

_I was a kid. What could I have done except get myself killed, too? I survived for her. I made what she did worth it._

_There's no fear or panic on Nell's features. Only calm. Maybe something resembling peace. She smiles through the blood trickling out of her mouth. She even squeezes Dante's hand. Wipes the tears from his face._

YOU FAILED THE WOMAN WHO TOOK YOU IN.

_I was still a kid back then, too. And I was away. I didn't know. And I have_ never _let it happen again to anybody I work for. Any human who helps me out._

The tendrils around Dante's wrists and ankles fell away. Only the one around his neck remained.

_"This place was our father's home."_

Dante tried to wrench himself away; he didn't want to see that face. Not that last look. Not again. 

YOU KILLED YOUR BROTHER.

_I sure hope not._ A weak chuckle. _I'm not that bad a lay._

NO, YOU DID FAR WORSE.

_A dusty glove on the office desktop. He's got to be dead. He was nearly dead when he fell. The fall killed him. It was over just like that. If it wasn't, he's - found a place for himself. Like he wanted. He's happier this way. He doesn't care. All that hurts is the not knowing._

_Stop this ride. I want off._

_The amulet that meant everything to him clatters to the stones. No one else can have it. The one thing he'd reach for instead of power. He's dead this time. He's dead. It's over. You put him out of his misery. It's done._

_The glove goes into the trash._

_"It means slave."_

_"He has his voice--"_

_"Thou accurs'd deserter."_

_"Did not let me leave of his own accord."_

_"--the end of Vergil's nightmares."_

The weight of that tendril was a yoke that drove Dante to his knees. Where it had gleamed dimly it now flared brilliant red-blue. 

"You have what you want." The distant rustle of Vergil's coat; cloth-covered bootsteps on sand. Sparks of steel along bone. "Set him free."

"YOU WILL GIVE ME YOURS AS WELL."

"Take it." Vergil stalked slowly past Dante and into his faded line of view, along the top of the largest tendril. "If you can."

More violet arms reached for his brother; Vergil batted them away with Yamato's hilt like flies. "Foolish. Worthless. These mean nothing to me."

"YOUR HUMAN SOUL FEELS NO GUILT?"

"I have no human soul." Dante saw the slash coming; so did Minos. Vergil was so weak a human might have. Minos caught his arm and his sword, poised to strike, in tight coils right before it landed an arc that would have sliced his head off. Vergil's teeth glowed whitely in the violet light. "Tell me: as a demon, what are my sins?"

The coils tightened to the breaking point. "FAILURE."

"Then I shall find absolution in victory." 

Vergil pulled Ebony out of his coat and fired straight into Minos' eye socket faster than either of them could blink. Kept firing until he blew the back of the demon king's skull out. The tendrils around Vergil's arm slackened; he tossed the pistol up in the air, switched his sword to the other hand, and completed that arc.

The tendril around Dante's throat crumbled to dust. He sank down, coughing, drained.

The ground began to shake beneath him. Minos' other limbs were disappearing, too. The threads that tied the piles of bones together were gone and they tumbled into the abyss and cracks formed with them, and if Dante didn't move he was going to with it.

Minos tumbled backward, holding his brother in a death grip.

Dante was moving long before rational thought caught up to him. In retrospect he was pretty sure he moved like Vergil could move: a blur the light didn't quite catch up to until it was too late. He was also pretty sure he didn't have the strength left to trigger, but that didn't matter, because he _knew_ Vergil didn't, and Vergil was falling, coat trailing out behind him, Yamato in one hand.

All that mattered was that Dante caught him. If they didn't make it back, so be it. They'd wind up pasted across the devil's doorstep together.

Dante jumped.


End file.
